From Learning Environments and Implementation to Activity Systems and Expansive Learning

The paper argues that the notion of learning environment is not a theoretical concept that can serve as the centerpiece and unit of analysis in research on computer-supported collaborative learning, and that the preoccupation in this research domain with implementation of digital learning environments is a largely misguided consequence of the unquestioned expectation that technology will radically change learning. The paper suggests that these two pervasive weaknesses may be at least partially overcome by examining activity systems as an alternative unit of analysis and by focusing on expansive learning instead of implementation as such. A case study of a Finnish middle school demonstrates that it is important to build the introduction of new technologies on the local realities of actual teachers and students. It is unlikely that the implementation and diffusion of advanced digital learning environments will be successful in a school where the teachers will not allow the students to use computers during recess and the students believe that their teachers will in any case take away the computers the next day. In the school examined in the case study, the building of trust and optimism by means of simple new practices and artifacts was the first step toward a serious collective engagement with the potentials of computers for instruction and learning

Teachers' beliefs as a component of motivational force of professional agency

This article investigates teachers’ beliefs – addressed here as worldviews – in the context of educational change. The intention is to develop a dynamic approach according to which worldviews are professional resources of meanings and personal constructs. We questioned what constitutes their ‘mental realm’ and how they, referring to subjective realities of a person’s world construction, can be conceived as collective and professionally shared. The topic was tackled theoretically in the frame of a cultural-historical approach to mind in which we drew upon insights of the integrative concept of meaningful activity. Worldviews were addressed in a school-based development of a secondary school in Austria when the teachers were updating their school’s profile. A special interview method (Ultimate Meanings Technique, UMT; Leontiev, 2007) was used to assist teachers and mediate their discussions on worldviews. In the findings, we propose methodological ideas for addressing ‘the mental’ and approaching worldviews as a type of tertiary artefacts, discuss the role of the UMT interviews in the school-based development and draw attention to a historical tension inside professional vision. The article underlines the importance of worldviews for creating historically responsive space of core meanings and for strengthening professional power of educators’ taking agency for change.Peer reviewe

From initiatives to employee-driven innovations

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine the generation of innovations by employees and the creation of initiative paths, and to discover which factors contribute to the implementation of an initiative. Design/methodology/approach - Based on longitudinal qualitative research, the study explores the profiles of initiative paths and the types of innovations and relationships among the generated innovations. Findings - It was found that, to become an innovation, an initiative followed different paths along which the processing and outcomes varied, as did the time needed for experimentation. The creation of initiative paths required the transformative agency of the actors involved. Power relations had an impact on the generation of initiatives and implementation of innovations. Originality/value - Innovations research has concentrated on the generation of ideas and the implementation of innovations. This study focuses on the process path along which ideas become innovations and on the role of power relations in the innovations process.Peer reviewe

形成的実験の方法をめざして

特別招待講演　講演者：Yrjö Engeström　司会者：田中俊也　通訳：カイト由利子・保坂裕

Editorial: Critical Perspectives on Replicability in Work/Organizational Psychology Research

Organization studies is emerging as an applied and performative science (Alvesson, 2020), aimed at enhancing academic-practitioner collaboration, and going beyond narrowly circumscribed areas of study to pursue ground-breaking research. Much of the research in this field is context-specific and therefore requires a shift in the mode of knowledge production

Preparedness is not enough: understanding transitions as critically intensive learning periods

Objectives: Doctors make many transitions whilst they are training and throughout their ensuing careers. Despite studies showing that transitions in other high risk professions such as aviation have been linked to increased risk in the form of adverse outcomes, the effects of changes on doctors’ performance and consequent implications for patient safety have been under-researched. The purpose of this project was to investigate the effects of transitions upon medical performance. Methods: The project sought to focus on the inter-relationships between doctors and the complex work settings into which they were transitioning. To this end, a ‘collective’ case study of doctors was designed. Key transitions for Foundation Year and Specialist Trainee doctors were studied. Four levels of the case were examined: the regulatory and policy context; employer requirements; the clinical teams in which doctors worked; and the doctors themselves. Data collection included interviews, observations and desk-based research.. Results: We identified a number of problems with doctors' transitions that can all adversely affect performance. A) Transitions are regulated but not systematically monitored. B) Actual practice (as observed and reported) was determined much more by situational and contextual factors than by the formal (regulatory and management) frameworks. C) Trainees’ and health professionals’ accounts of their actual experience of work showed how performance is dependent on local learning environment. D) We found that the increased regulation of clinical activity through protocols and care pathways helps trainees’ performance whilst the less regulated aspects of work such as rotas, induction and multiple transitions within rotations can impede the transition. Conclusions: Transitions may be reframed as critically intensive learning periods (CILPs) in which doctors engage with the particularities of the setting and establish working relationships with doctors and other professionals. Institutions and wards have their own learning cultures which may or may not recognise that transitions are CILPS. The extent to which these cultures take account of transitions as CILPs will contribute to the performance of new doctors. There are therefore implications for practice, and for policy, regulation and research

Theorising interprofessional pedagogic evaluation: framework for evaluating the impact of interprofessional CPD on practice change

This paper outlines the development of a conceptual framework to guide the evaluation of the impact of the pedagogy employed in continuing professional development for professionals in education, health and social care. The work is developed as part of the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning: Interprofessional Learning across the Public Sector (CETL: IPPS) at the University of Southampton. The paper briefly outlines the field for pedagogic research and comments on the underpinning theories that have so far been used to guide research into interprofessional learning (IPL). It maps out the development of interprofessional CPD in its specific context as part of the CETL: IPPS with its links to a local authority undergoing service reorganisation and the role of the continuing professional development (CPD) in effecting change. It then brings together a theoretical framework with the potential toexplore, explain and evaluate the essential features of the model of pedagogy used in interprofessional CPD, in which professionals from education have for the first time been included alongside those from health and social care. The framework draws upon elements of situated learning theory, Activity Theory and Dreier’s work (2002, 1999) on trajectories of participation, particularly Personal Action Potency. By combining the resulting analytic framework with an adapted version of an established evaluation model, a theoretically-driven, practicable evaluation matrix is developed. The matrix has potential use in evaluating the impact of pedagogic input on practice change. The paper models a process for developing a conceptual framework to steer pedagogic evaluation. Such a process and the resulting matrix may be of use to other researchers who are similarly developing pedagogic evaluation

The significance of work allocation in the professional apprenticeship of solicitors

It is a peculiarity of the solicitors’ profession that it has historically relied on methods of pre-qualification ‘training’ by way of apprenticeship and that an entirely respectable non-graduate route into the profession remains. In a political context, however, where the profession is called upon positively to demonstrate its standards of performance, the professional regulator seeks to attach a competence framework to the existing model; shifting the focus from how the trainee learns to what the trainee learns. This paper will explore the period of traineeship from the perspective of the trainees themselves, drawing on two small qualitative studies, focussing on the fundamental context factor of the allocation and structuring of their work. In the first study the context for this evaluation is the set of outcomes being tested by the professional regulator and in the second, the perceptions of qualified individuals looking back at their apprenticeship, The paper concludes that there remains work for the profession to do not only in fostering supportive and expansive apprenticeships, but in attending, however, supportive the surrounding environment, to the work being carried out by trainees and its relationship with the work carried out by newly qualified solicitors

Nurse practitioner interactions in acute and long-term care : an exploration of the role of knotworking in supporting interprofessional collaboration

BACKGROUND: Interprofessional care ensures high quality healthcare. Effective interprofessional collaboration is required to enable interprofessional care, although within the acute care hospital setting interprofessional collaboration is considered suboptimal. The integration of nurse practitioner roles into the acute and long-term care settings is influencing enhanced care. What remains unknown is how the nurse practitioner role enacts interprofessional collaboration or enables interprofessional care to promote high quality care. The study aim was to understand how nurse practitioners employed in acute and long-term care settings enable interprofessional collaboration and care. METHOD: Nurse practitioner interactions with other healthcare professionals were observed throughout the work day. These interactions were explored within the context of "knotworking" to create an understanding of their social practices and processes supporting interprofessional collaboration. Healthcare professionals who worked with nurse practitioners were invited to share their perceptions of valued role attributes and impacts. RESULTS: Twenty-four nurse practitioners employed at six hospitals participated. 384 hours of observation provided 1,284 observed interactions for analysis. Two types of observed interactions are comparable to knotworking. Rapid interactions resemble the traditional knotworking described in earlier studies, while brief interactions are a new form of knotworking with enhanced qualities that more consistently result in interprofessional care. Nurse practitioners were the most common initiators of brief interactions. CONCLUSIONS: Brief interactions reveal new qualities of knotworking with more consistent interprofessional care results. A general process used by nurse practitioners, where they practice a combination of both traditional (rapid) knotworking and brief knotworking to enable interprofessional care within acute and long-term care settings, is revealed

Information and communications technologies (ICT) in Higher Education teaching – a tale of gradualism rather than revolution

The widespread adoption of information and communications technologies (ICT) in higher education (HE) since the mid 1990s has failed to produce the radical changes in learning and teaching than many anticipated. Activity theory and Rogers’ model of the adoption of innovations provide analytic frameworks that help develop our understanding of the actual impact of ICT upon teaching practices. This paper draws on a series of large-scale surveys carried out over a 10 year period with distance education tutors at the UK Open University to explore the changing role of ICT in the work of teachers. It investigates how HE teachers in one large distance learning university have, over time, appropriated ICT applications as teaching tools, and the gradual rather than revolutionary changes that have resulted